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Prodigy build and Kaveri questions

TymmVonD

Ok. So yesterday, I went to Bargain Hunt. And hid away in the PC section was Bitfenix Prodigy for $23. I picked it up and am too excited to wait to build in it. My original plan was to go z87 and i5 or i7. So... I ordered a Gigabyte A88X mini ITX board and a side window.

 

I'm gonna order the A10-7850K in a week or so.

 

I'm placing my bets on DX12 alleviating the weak nature of the A10 instead of being smart and going Intel. I'm also gonna order an R9 290. It is set in stone for now. No changing my mind. Am I gonna be severely limited by the 4 steamroller cores? My A8 performed 20FPS lower paired with a 780 compared to 8350 and 780 in BF4. Will Mantle or DX12 help this?

 

Also, should I get a 280x instead. Nobody has info on Kaveri with a dedicated GPU.

Air 540, MSI Z97 Gaming 7, 4770K, SLI EVGA 980Ti, 16GB Vengeance Pro 2133, HX1050, H105840 EVO 500, 850 Pro 512, WD Black 1TB, HyperX 3K 120, SMSNG u28e590d, K70 Blues, M65 RGB.          Son's PC: A10 7850k, MSI A88X gaming, MSI gaming R9 270X, Air 240, H55, 8GB Vengeance pro 2400, CX430, Asus VG278HE, K60 Reds, M65 RGB                                                                                       Daughter's PC: i5-4430, MSI z87 gaming AC, GTX970 gaming 4G, pink air 240, fury 1866 8gb, CX600, SMSNG un55HU8550, CMstorm greens, Deathadder 2013

 

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If Kaveri will bottleneck the GPU, will getting a 280x perform the same as 290? Would I net more FPS out of a 290X?

Air 540, MSI Z97 Gaming 7, 4770K, SLI EVGA 980Ti, 16GB Vengeance Pro 2133, HX1050, H105840 EVO 500, 850 Pro 512, WD Black 1TB, HyperX 3K 120, SMSNG u28e590d, K70 Blues, M65 RGB.          Son's PC: A10 7850k, MSI A88X gaming, MSI gaming R9 270X, Air 240, H55, 8GB Vengeance pro 2400, CX430, Asus VG278HE, K60 Reds, M65 RGB                                                                                       Daughter's PC: i5-4430, MSI z87 gaming AC, GTX970 gaming 4G, pink air 240, fury 1866 8gb, CX600, SMSNG un55HU8550, CMstorm greens, Deathadder 2013

 

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290 vs 290X isn't great at all. Only a minor performance increase for about XXX dollars.

But your motherboard isn't MITX never mind I read it wrong..your signature confused me@TymmVonD

Please become a member of the Linus Tech Tips forum, keep writing smug remarks & let us love you. Peace out.


<| Project M13 & Silverstream. Other DIY projects |>

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I'm pretty sure an A10 paired with an R9 290 or a R9 280X is just asking for a massive bottleneck. I wouldn't count on DX12 or Mantle to sove that. 

      

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I'm pretty sure an A10 pared with an R9 290 or a R9 280X is just asking for a massive bottleneck. I wouldn't count on DX12 or Mantle to sove that. 

 

thisthisthis

 

I'm also pretty sure that you won't be able to crossfire the 7850k's r7 graphics with any of the r9's.

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you won't be able to crossfire the 7850k's r7 graphics with any of the r9's.

confirmed

      

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@nj4ck @Vizzion @wng_kingsley7

 

So, should I buy a dedicated GPU? Which one? Or do I have to run Crossfire R7?

Air 540, MSI Z97 Gaming 7, 4770K, SLI EVGA 980Ti, 16GB Vengeance Pro 2133, HX1050, H105840 EVO 500, 850 Pro 512, WD Black 1TB, HyperX 3K 120, SMSNG u28e590d, K70 Blues, M65 RGB.          Son's PC: A10 7850k, MSI A88X gaming, MSI gaming R9 270X, Air 240, H55, 8GB Vengeance pro 2400, CX430, Asus VG278HE, K60 Reds, M65 RGB                                                                                       Daughter's PC: i5-4430, MSI z87 gaming AC, GTX970 gaming 4G, pink air 240, fury 1866 8gb, CX600, SMSNG un55HU8550, CMstorm greens, Deathadder 2013

 

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@nj4ck @Vizzion @wng_kingsley7

 

So, should I buy a dedicated GPU? Which one? Or do I have to run Crossfire R7?

I dedicated graphics card will always outdue a cpu's igpu. So I would go with Yes. I'm not totally knowledgeable with how the AMD Crossfire works with the Kaveri CPU's and R9/R7 pairing works.

Please become a member of the Linus Tech Tips forum, keep writing smug remarks & let us love you. Peace out.


<| Project M13 & Silverstream. Other DIY projects |>

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@nj4ck @Vizzion @wng_kingsley7

 

So, should I buy a dedicated GPU? Which one? Or do I have to run Crossfire R7?

I understand you already ordered the A10, so yeah. Go with a R7.

      

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AMD have confirm only the R7 240 and R7 250 are the supported GPUs for Hybrid X-Fire

 

although some user may be able to get the R7 250X to work with the APU

 

the reason is that the R7 240 and 250 are using GDDR3 memory to match the system memory speed

 

cards using GDDR5 will have to clock down just for Dual Graphics with the APU to work

 

 

link here

 

http://www.techspot.com/review/781-amd-a10-7850k-graphics-performance/

 

actually I don't see any reason why the Kaveri will bottleneck the R9 290 GPU, the Kaveri has support for PCI-E 3.0 with the updated internal northbridge

 

and during CES, AMD was demonstrating Thief game on the A10-7850K with the R9 290X system using the BitFenix Prodigy chassis  

 

 

 

and since you are running a dedicated GPU, you will not need the higher MHz RAM since the on board GPU will not be used

Budget? Uses? Currency? Location? Operating System? Peripherals? Monitor? Use PCPartPicker wherever possible. 

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Could have saved yourself nearly $100 by going with the Athlon X4 760K if you were going with discreet graphics anyways. The "CPU" of the A10-7850K has been shown to hold no significant advantage over the previous flagship Richland parts (6800K/760K). 

 

Unless you will be running specific apps that will be able to take advantage of the HSA capabilities of the new Kaveri APUs, you really should have gone with the 760K instead. 

 

But, if you've already ordered, that's now water under the bridge.

 

The reason lower-end CPUs bottleneck high-end GPUs is because the CPU cannot keep up pace with the GPU. The GPU runs effortlessly and is able to complete the instructions given to it by the CPU faster than the CPU can feed it. Thus, the GPU ends up waiting for the next set of instructions. It is better to match GPUs and CPUs that work better together for a more balanced system. Rather than spending way more on a GPU that the CPU won't be able to fully drive, you can spend less on a GPU and get the same performance. With mantle and DX12, the CPU overhead is and will be significantly lowered, meaning lower-end CPUs will be able to drive higher-end GPUs better as these optimizations are refined and implemented. That being said, IMO an R9-270X would be about the limit of the A10-7850K, for the moment. Anything higher than a 280/X will probably be held back.

My Systems:

Main - Work + Gaming:

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Woodland Raven: Ryzen 2700X // AMD Wraith RGB // Asus Prime X570-P // G.Skill 2x 8GB 3600MHz DDR4 // Radeon RX Vega 56 // Crucial P1 NVMe 1TB M.2 SSD // Deepcool DQ650-M // chassis build in progress // Windows 10 // Thrustmaster TMX + G27 pedals & shifter

F@H Rig:

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FX-8350 // Deepcool Neptwin // MSI 970 Gaming // AData 2x 4GB 1600 DDR3 // 2x Gigabyte RX-570 4G's // Samsung 840 120GB SSD // Cooler Master V650 // Windows 10

 

HTPC:

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SNES PC (HTPC): i3-4150 @3.5 // Gigabyte GA-H87N-Wifi // G.Skill 2x 4GB DDR3 1600 // Asus Dual GTX 1050Ti 4GB OC // AData SP600 128GB SSD // Pico 160XT PSU // Custom SNES Enclosure // 55" LG LED 1080p TV  // Logitech wireless touchpad-keyboard // Windows 10 // Build Log

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MY DAILY: Lenovo ThinkPad T410 // 14" 1440x900 // i5-540M 2.5GHz Dual-Core HT // Intel HD iGPU + Quadro NVS 3100M 512MB dGPU // 2x4GB DDR3L 1066 // Mushkin Triactor 480GB SSD // Windows 10

 

WIFE'S: Dell Latitude E5450 // 14" 1366x768 // i5-5300U 2.3GHz Dual-Core HT // Intel HD5500 // 2x4GB RAM DDR3L 1600 // 500GB 7200 HDD // Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon

 

EXPERIMENTAL: Pinebook // 11.6" 1080p // Manjaro KDE (ARM)

NAS:

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Home NAS: Pentium G4400 @3.3 // Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 // 2x 4GB DDR4 2400 // Intel HD Graphics // Kingston A400 120GB SSD // 3x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 HDDs in RAID-Z // Cooler Master Silent Pro M 1000w PSU // Antec Performance Plus 1080AMG // FreeNAS OS

 

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Could have saved yourself nearly $100 by going with the Athlon X4 760K if you were going with discreet graphics anyways. The "CPU" of the A10-7850K has been shown to hold no significant advantage over the previous flagship Richland parts (6800K/760K). 

 

Unless you will be running specific apps that will be able to take advantage of the HSA capabilities of the new Kaveri APUs, you really should have gone with the 760K instead. 

 

But, if you've already ordered, that's now water under the bridge.

 

The reason lower-end CPUs bottleneck high-end GPUs is because the CPU cannot keep up pace with the GPU. The GPU runs effortlessly and is able to complete the instructions given to it by the CPU faster than the CPU can feed it. Thus, the GPU ends up waiting for the next set of instructions. It is better to match GPUs and CPUs that work better together for a more balanced system. Rather than spending way more on a GPU that the CPU won't be able to fully drive, you can spend less on a GPU and get the same performance. With mantle and DX12, the CPU overhead is and will be significantly lowered, meaning lower-end CPUs will be able to drive higher-end GPUs better as these optimizations are refined and implemented. That being said, IMO an R9-270X would be about the limit of the A10-7850K, for the moment. Anything higher than a 280/X will probably be held back.

well good point for explain bottleneck part

 

I still wonder if the upgrade of the northbridge to support PCI-E 3.0 will reduce the bottleneck and allow the GPU to fully utilize the full PCI-E bus lanes

Budget? Uses? Currency? Location? Operating System? Peripherals? Monitor? Use PCPartPicker wherever possible. 

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It seems to me that AMD is ditching the FX lineup for the APU chips

 

while the FX8350 is a value for money CPU, the issue now is that the AM3+ platform is very old and have limits

 

AM3+ only supports up to 1866MHz memory and northbridge bus speeds and only PCI-E 2.0

 

now the FM2+ supports PCI-E 3.0, 2400MHz memories and northbridge

Budget? Uses? Currency? Location? Operating System? Peripherals? Monitor? Use PCPartPicker wherever possible. 

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well good point for explain bottleneck part

 

I still wonder if the upgrade of the northbridge to support PCI-E 3.0 will reduce the bottleneck and allow the GPU to fully utilize the full PCI-E bus lanes

 

 

It seems to me that AMD is ditching the FX lineup for the APU chips

 

while the FX8350 is a value for money CPU, the issue now is that the AM3+ platform is very old and have limits

 

AM3+ only supports up to 1866MHz memory and northbridge bus speeds and only PCI-E 2.0

 

now the FM2+ supports PCI-E 3.0, 2400MHz memories and northbridge

 

Just so you know, even the most powerful graphics cards on the market today are still only PCI-E 2.0 and still are not yet able to completely saturate the bandwidth. So there is zero benefit in having PCI-E 3.0 over 2.0 and it will be so for quite some time yet. Performance gains in GPUs has grown a bit stagnant as of late with more emphasis now being placed on driver and API optimizations.

 

AM3+ may be aging but it's very far from death and far from being "limited". The FX-83XX CPUs have only become more useful with age as more games and apps become better optimized for multi-core/thread CPUs.  

 

DDR3 RAM frequency in systems with a dedicated CPU and GPU makes almost no difference in gaming because the GPU has it's own much faster GDDR5 RAM which is used primarily instead. The only reason faster system RAM is needed for a standalone APU is because the on-board GPU uses the system RAM as Vram. This is why we see a nice performance jump when running a standalone APU when going from 1600mhz RAM to 2133mhz RAM. There is a large RAM bandwidth bottleneck issue with APUs because they use the system RAM, but that is partially compensated with using faster RAM. 

 

With DDR4 RAM on the horizon, this will greatly improve APU performance as that bottleneck will be significantly reduced. 

 

Another thing to remember about system RAM is higher frequency RAM will also typically have a higher latency which somewhat negates the purpose. For example, 1600mhz CL9 RAM will perform just as well as 2133mhz CL12 RAM. You can get higher frequency RAM with lower latency, but it's often quite a bit more expensive and you still won't see any benefit in a system with dedicated graphics.   

My Systems:

Main - Work + Gaming:

Spoiler

Woodland Raven: Ryzen 2700X // AMD Wraith RGB // Asus Prime X570-P // G.Skill 2x 8GB 3600MHz DDR4 // Radeon RX Vega 56 // Crucial P1 NVMe 1TB M.2 SSD // Deepcool DQ650-M // chassis build in progress // Windows 10 // Thrustmaster TMX + G27 pedals & shifter

F@H Rig:

Spoiler

FX-8350 // Deepcool Neptwin // MSI 970 Gaming // AData 2x 4GB 1600 DDR3 // 2x Gigabyte RX-570 4G's // Samsung 840 120GB SSD // Cooler Master V650 // Windows 10

 

HTPC:

Spoiler

SNES PC (HTPC): i3-4150 @3.5 // Gigabyte GA-H87N-Wifi // G.Skill 2x 4GB DDR3 1600 // Asus Dual GTX 1050Ti 4GB OC // AData SP600 128GB SSD // Pico 160XT PSU // Custom SNES Enclosure // 55" LG LED 1080p TV  // Logitech wireless touchpad-keyboard // Windows 10 // Build Log

Laptops:

Spoiler

MY DAILY: Lenovo ThinkPad T410 // 14" 1440x900 // i5-540M 2.5GHz Dual-Core HT // Intel HD iGPU + Quadro NVS 3100M 512MB dGPU // 2x4GB DDR3L 1066 // Mushkin Triactor 480GB SSD // Windows 10

 

WIFE'S: Dell Latitude E5450 // 14" 1366x768 // i5-5300U 2.3GHz Dual-Core HT // Intel HD5500 // 2x4GB RAM DDR3L 1600 // 500GB 7200 HDD // Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon

 

EXPERIMENTAL: Pinebook // 11.6" 1080p // Manjaro KDE (ARM)

NAS:

Spoiler

Home NAS: Pentium G4400 @3.3 // Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 // 2x 4GB DDR4 2400 // Intel HD Graphics // Kingston A400 120GB SSD // 3x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 HDDs in RAID-Z // Cooler Master Silent Pro M 1000w PSU // Antec Performance Plus 1080AMG // FreeNAS OS

 

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Just so you know, even the most powerful graphics cards on the market today are still only PCI-E 2.0 and still are not yet able to completely saturate the bandwidth. So there is zero benefit in having PCI-E 3.0 over 2.0 and it will be so for quite some time yet. Performance gains in GPUs has grown a bit stagnant as of late with more emphasis now being placed on driver and API optimizations.

AM3+ may be aging but it's very far from death and far from being "limited". The FX-83XX CPUs have only become more useful with age as more games and apps become better optimized for multi-core/thread CPUs.

DDR3 RAM frequency in systems with a dedicated CPU and GPU makes almost no difference in gaming because the GPU has it's own much faster GDDR5 RAM which is used primarily instead. The only reason faster system RAM is needed for a standalone APU is because the on-board GPU uses the system RAM as Vram. This is why we see a nice performance jump when running a standalone APU when going from 1600mhz RAM to 2133mhz RAM. There is a large RAM bandwidth bottleneck issue with APUs because they use the system RAM, but that is partially compensated with using faster RAM.

With DDR4 RAM on the horizon, this will greatly improve APU performance as that bottleneck will be significantly reduced.

Another thing to remember about system RAM is higher frequency RAM will also typically have a higher latency which somewhat negates the purpose. For example, 1600mhz CL9 RAM will perform just as well as 2133mhz CL12 RAM. You can get higher frequency RAM with lower latency, but it's often quite a bit more expensive and you still won't see any benefit in a system with dedicated graphics.

Your words of wisdom never fail to amaze me :)

Yes I do have to agree that games and apps are now moving towards multi core/treads.

But there are still things that AMD need to do in order to capture the pc market share once more.

Not a long time ago their Athlon Thunderbird crossed the 1GHz mark. When it was the MHz race. AMD then have the Athlon xp for Windows xp. And the first dual core processor. And the FX 8 core processor. But now Intel pretty much dominated almost the ready-made pc with only a small market of DIY desktops using AMD chips.

Even my local stores hardly stock up on AMD chips like they used to and pretty much pushing Intel chip to customers.

Customers mindset on AMD have changed a lot and no one here is even interested in their latest APU.

Worst the prices of the Intel and mobo combo is inflated more than other region. Not a good thing when on a budget.

I might have to resort to buying my AMD parts online and shipping to my country. :(

Budget? Uses? Currency? Location? Operating System? Peripherals? Monitor? Use PCPartPicker wherever possible. 

Quote whom you're replying to, and set option to follow your topics. Or Else we can't see your reply.

 

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